David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, might not be the most prolific of writers, but a novel like this is worth waiting for. Sixteen-year-old runaway Ann Holmes is eking out a living as a mushroom picker in the rain-soaked woods of North Fork. As a drug user with a fondness for fungi of the less culinary variety, her claim to have been visited by the Virgin Mary in the depths of the forest is at first met with scepticism.

But when word of her visions spreads, the logging community of North Fork soon finds itself besieged as it becomes a national focus for religious mania. With pressure on Ann, the town and its church propelled towards crisis point, the priest finds his faith tested further by an altogether less pious interest in his young charge. David Guterson's characters may be flawed but his narrative certainly isn't, maintaining an aura of mystery up to the end.

Charlie Johnson In The FlamesMichael IgnatieffVintage £6.99, pp15

When an ill-judged field trip in the Balkans goes badly wrong, ageing war correspondent Charlie Johnson has to watch as a woman he has inadvertently involved is set on fire. In his attempt to save her, he, too, is injured. But even when the flames are doused, Charlie finds himself irrevocably altered by the experience. Losing the professional detachment that has pro tected him over the years, he is determined to find the man responsible, regardless of the cost to himself or those around him.

Ignatieff's novel may be short, but that serves to concentrate its force. With a prose style that's so to the point that it might have been rendered down by fire itself, this is an intensely gripping take on the dehumanising effects of war. The fact that Ignatieff doesn't flinch from the inevitable conclusion to Charlie's quest makes it all the more powerful.